Floor Tile Selection

As usual, we did some casual research on a few type of flooring available.

1. Natural stone
The 2 common type are marble and granite.
Marble was our favourite as my partner and I both loved the wavy natural patterns and cool feeling of marble. But marble is probably the most "capital intensive" and high maintenance of all our options. It needs to be polished every few years to maintain its glossy look, each costing about S$200 plus (depending on floor area) and major furniture shifting. Marble is also more susceptible to staining from deep coloured drinks like red wine.

Granite on the other hand is extreme durable but cheaper than marble. Our problem with granite is that the patterns did not appeal to us very much. Granite patterns are usually speckled and it looks too heavy for our theme of Classic European


2. "Man-made" stone
Commonly known as Homogeneous tiles. These are factory-made tiles compressed under high temperature and pressure into form and pattern. we learnt that homogeneous tiles come in a large range of qualities. Not that we understood how to tell the difference. Homogeneous tiles comes in a large variety of patterns and are known to be more durable and easy to maintain than marble. Plus it is a fraction of marble price.
3. Laminate
If you have seen our blog, the pre-renovation was using wooden laminates. the system consist of interlocking wooden panels that is laid on a tile or concrete slab surface.

Conclusion
Considering the functionality over ascetics, budget over luxury, we picked homogeneous tile. We had 1 young boy and another one coming then. Milk spillage and crayons is something marble cannot withstand.

However, we choose as big (600mmx600mm) a homogeneous tile size as possible from a pattern that resembled marble. That's as close as we can get to marble... ...